1996
Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and
undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of
God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal
life.46

1997
Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy
of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of
Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth
call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life
of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.

1998
This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God's
gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses
the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other
creature.47

1999
The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own
life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify
it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us
the source of the work of sanctification:48

Therefore if any one is in
Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has
come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to
himself.49

2000
Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition
that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his
love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with
God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's
interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the
work of sanctification.

2001
The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace.
This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification
through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion
in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating
with our will began by working so that we might will it:"50

Indeed we also work, but we
are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It
has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once
healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and
follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live
devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him
we can do nothing.51

2002
God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in
his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and
love him. the soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God
immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a
longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. the promises of
"eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:

If at the end of your very
good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the
voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed "very
good" since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the
sabbath of eternal life.52

2003
Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies
us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us
with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in
the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces,
gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces,
also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning
"favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit."53
Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of
miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are
intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity
which builds up the Church.54

2004
Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the graces of state that
accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the
ministries within the Church:

Having gifts that differ
according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion
to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he
who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who
gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.55

2005
Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and
cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or
our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.56 However,
according to the Lord's words "Thus you will know them by their
fruits"57 - reflection on God's blessings in our life and in the
lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs
us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.

A pleasing illustration of
this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a
trap by her ecclesiastical judges: "Asked if she knew that she was in
God's grace, she replied: 'If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I
am, may it please God to keep me there.'"58